Treatment planning

​When it comes to treating tumours with radiation, there are many elements to take into account. The size, shape and location of the cancer must be considered, alongside other factors like your general health and other medical treatments you have undergone, or have planned.

A team of radiation oncologists, radiation therapists and medical physicists work together to plan accurately what dose and angles of radiation will best suit a patient’s condition.

These experts use advanced technology to paint an extremely accurate picture of your condition - this means your radiation therapy will be as effective as possible.

In more detail

ARO’s expert team use a leading-edge treatment planning system, allowing the radiation to be ‘sculpted’ to match the tumour. This means your treatment will be as fast and effective as possible, while also minimising the impact on surrounding healthy tissues.

ARO was the first treatment centre in Australasia to implement RayStation®, the most advanced treatment planning system on the market today. RayStation® optimises algorithms for VMAT, IMRT and 3D-CRT machines, while also allowing for traditional 3D images of the tumour.

The planning system allows your medical team to decide on how many radiation beams to use, which angles each will be delivered from and if attenuating wedges can be used. This process will also show if a multileaf collimator configuration can be used to shape the radiation from each beam.

Once the team has made an initial plan, calculations will be made to ensure the prescribed dose is delivered to a specific area. It also factors in any beam modifiers like wedges, specialised collimation, field sizes or tumor depth.

RayStation’s other capabilities are what make it one of the most advanced systems to date. It can combine CT, PET and MRI functionalities, contour, uses collapsed cone convolution dose computation and 4D data compatibility. Other unique features include multi-criteria optimisation, dose tracking, treatment adaptation and deformable registration.